


Quae Autem

by JamyCatalyst (OutcastPack)



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: LGBTQ Character, LGBTQ Themes, Modern Character in Thedas, Modern Girl in Thedas, Multi, Non-Binary OC, Non-binary character, Original Characters - Freeform, lgbtqia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-22
Updated: 2016-08-22
Packaged: 2018-08-10 11:50:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7843816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OutcastPack/pseuds/JamyCatalyst
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A temple suddenly appears in Snæfellsjökull, Iceland. No one's ever seen anything like it before, and in the year 2069 CE, when most are looking towards the stars for answers, famous writer Max De-Mon finds themselves investigating these unique ruins. Being the trouble magnet that they are, they find themselves in over their head, as usual, but this time Max might not be able to come back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Quae Autem

**Quae Autem**

_“Powers that Be”_

**Prologue-** _‘First Mistake’_

** -2069 CE- **

_‘A ceiling fan?’_ I watch as the blades spin around and around. I can hear the bubbles from the fish tank across the uncomfortably grey room, the whirling of computer fans from the office rooms down the hall, the noise of cells and omni-watches in the waiting room: The sounds of boredom, truly. Every noise just reminded me of where I was. Not to mention the smell; rancid coffee, mold, and sweat. The airport of Keflavik was relatively small and pretty damn old, which explains the ceiling fans. _‘But seriously, who still uses ceiling fans? This is 2060 not 2020!’_

“Alex Angel!” A woman suddenly yells from across the room, her Icelandic accent making my name sound a bit weird. Not that it wasn’t weird already, they called me ‘Double A’ back in school, luckily my brother got more attention than me since his name was far weirder. But still, _Double A_ , still haunts me to this day. And no, I never mean for that to rhyme. But the bastard does every time.

I pick up my bags, well _bag_ I mean. After traveling so much and so often I’ve learned what must come and what must stay. Traveling light is by far the best way to travel; one black rolling travel backpack is all you need. Some people have those auto-hovering packs but they can short circuit or overheat easily, while I’m not usually a **fan** of old stuff. No pun intended. There are some old things I still appreciate. My backpack, my books, and a pencil and note pad. Yes, a notepad with normal paper, and yes it’s really hard to find those which is why I use them sparingly, just in case inspiration strikes me or if I find clues to a murder….okay, I’m joking about that last one.

I walk up to the rather short older woman with beautiful blonde hair and kind blue eyes. She’s wearing this adorable sweater with a puppy on it and the moment I walk up to her she smiles and seems very nice and approachable. I’m hoping I’m going to discuss my business here in Iceland with her, that way I don’t have to worry about getting overly anxious and nervous. But that hope is short lived.

In a nice calming voice she says: “Eltu mig.” Her accent’s pretty thick, but the translator piece in my ear tells me she says _‘Follow me’_. Ah, gotta love technology. Although to be honest I think most days I don’t need this thing, I practically have several languages drilled into my head by now, but since this is only my second time in Iceland I don’t think I know Icelandic well enough for that yet.

I follow her, and look everywhere but at her and her curves. She looks good for a forty something that’s for damn sure, but I don’t want to be disrespectful, she’s been so nice to me thus far.

Unfortunately Miss Nice Lady leads me to an office that’s inhabited by what looks like a detective gone so rogue he literally got demoted to airport investigator. His brown eyes are dark and full of distrust and annoyance. He slouches in his chair, his holo-computer having my file up, my passport chip sitting on the side of the desk, his sweaty hands together under his chin. The holo-plate on his desk says: EYSTEINN ARNBJÖRG. I wince, knowing I could never pronounce that correctly.

The woman behind me closes the door to the office and Eysteinn motions for me to have a seat in front of his desk. I do, but very carefully, keeping my bag close to my side.

“Hvers vegna ert þú hér í fallegu Íslandi, Miss Angel?” The man says, his voice deep and scratchy, like he’d been puffing on E-cigs all day. But he says it with authority, trying to play the serious cop I guess.

My translator informs me he just said: _‘Why are you here in beautiful Iceland, Miss Angel?’_ Talk about a man with a serious love for his country, explains the flag on the wall behind him. That’s a bit rare in this day and age. Since travel is free now, almost no one stays in the country they’re born in, and hold no favorites among the interesting diverse places of the world.

“Umm,” I fumble nervously, his intense gaze giving me anxiety. My hand fumbles to the necklace I’m wearing. The one sent to me from Irish Mitra, a very interesting individual. Irish was a dark skinned blood related Indian trans-woman, and a beautiful one in body and soul. The stubble never bothered me and she had the voice of an angel and was so positive; she was my very own ray of sunshine. Sure I meet plenty of great people traveling, but Irish was special. Hell, didn’t even meet her traveling, met her on a website for the LGBTQ community. She was the one who inspired me to admit to being Bi and non-binary. Not that anyone cares I’m non-binary, since if you squint I look like a woman they just assume to call me Miss or She, but it doesn’t really bother me. On days where I get to wear my hoodie most people assume I’m a guy, once again them calling me a He doesn’t bother me either, but when they try to shove stereotypes down my throat; that’s when I get annoyed.

 

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/155314803@N05/37392928540/in/dateposted-public/)

_(Alex's necklace.)_

Anyway, Irish sent me this necklace, she found it on one of her digs, being an archeologist and all, it was of a wheel which had runes inscribed on it, something about the Aztec God of the Sun, and it had this amazing sun looking gem in the center. Due to the man who hired her not paying her enough, making a whole scene about how disgusting she was later, she took this as a part of her payment, and the museum who the man worked for thought it was fine, also fired the jackass that hired her too for giving her grief. She’s one of the best damn archeologist’s out there, yet people still give her hell for….ugh, makes me sick thinking about it.

Point is, that necklace always gave me a bit of strength, she always told me to stand up for myself and who I was, so for her I tried to do that more often. Not only that, I was looking forward to seeing her again, and this asshat was not keeping me from her.

“I’m here as a journalist, I’m covering Madam Mitra’s dig, the one in Snæfellsjökull National Park. You know, the one the news has been talking about?” The man’s face was blank, and I felt robbed of what should have been a gob smacked expression, so I tried again. “My pen name is Max De-Mon, you know, writer of two award winning novels, several hit songs, a column in the New York Times, and journalist representative of the Smithsonian Institution!” When the man only blinked at me I fumed, anyone else would have been at least a little impressed for god’s sake!

With a very thick accent, Eysteinn replied blandly in plain English. “Very interesting.”

Silently, I screamed in my head. I worked my ass off to make men like him gasp in surprise, to be a good representative to my non-binary and Bi peeps around the world. Sure, Alex Angel actually just sits in their apartment writing and drawing, but Max De-Mon goes on adventures, wins awards, does all these amazing things and helps out the LGBTQ community as much as they can! Of course, sometimes that’s still not enough, sometimes I’m just the ‘girl’ dressed like a ‘boy’. I sighed deeply and felt my ego shrink quietly.

Eysteinn coughed discreetly and looked back at my file on his holo-computer. He looked it over, then looked back at me, and then nodded. “Well, _Miss_ Angel.” He puts an extra emphasis on Miss, the bastard. 2069 and there are still people like him and that jackass from the museum hiring committee. At least the people who accept outnumber the people who don’t nowadays. “Everything checkz ou-t. Eigið góðan dag.” He finishes, standing up, he picks up my passport chip and hands it to me.

I’m too frustrated to listen to my translator for the last bit of what he says; I just take my chip and put it back in my omni-watch where it goes. Now standing, I pick up my bag and leave his office, inaudibly fuming. No one stops me, and I’m able to finally make it out of the old airport and into a taxi. The taxi takes me straight to a hotel in Hellissandur, since I had no interest in camping out near the dig. Last time I did that I never got any sleep, and no sleep means notes that are incredibly hard to read, which made for a pretty sub-par report sent back to the Smithsonian and National Geographic. Lucky I didn’t lose my job because of that, if I did that would mean I’d barely ever get the chance to see Irish again.

I settle into my nice peaceful hotel room easily. Due to some God awful jet lag, I unpack what I need and grab some shut eye. Sleeping has never been easy for me, since I have some pretty bad ADHD sometimes I can only sleep when I get a good drink of something full of caffeine. Thankfully, just for rare occasions, I have some nice drug-filled sleeping meds. I only take them when I travel and I only take one when I really need to. Since if I have a nightmare when I’m on these I can’t wake up. Instead of having a nightmare tonight though, I dream about the green lush valleys in the park, all these strange creatures running but not in fear, more playfully than anything else. So it was a peaceful dream, and when I awoke, it now being nearly midnight, I was refreshed and well rested.

Finding a taxi at midnight around here was almost impossible, so I have the hotel e-message for an Uber. While I’m waiting for it I feel a wave of self-consciousness hit me, it’d been a while since I’d last seen Irish. I thought maybe I should look nice for the occasion, but not anything too over the top; I was going to a dig site after all. So I go back up to my room quickly and look into the bathroom’s mirror.

I hated looking into mirrors; they made me think about how most people saw only how you looked on the surface instead of who you are. How no one can see the deeper parts of you, just like a mirror could only see the surface parts of you. I sighed and shook my head, no reason to get all feely right now.

 

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/155314803@N05/37618693742/in/dateposted-public/)

_(This is how I imagine Alex/Max looks.)_

 Since I’d seen Irish last I’d gotten a bit tanner, went to Brazil to do some research and BOOM tan. Also got my hair dyed and let it grow out a bit more. Now instead of having no length, some of my hair was swept over in waves, a piece of it covering my right eye. And my hair was almost a white color, although it looked silvery to me. A pretty girl at the salon told me my bright blue eyes would look good with that hair color, and well, I could never say no to nice pretty girl’s, especially since I told her I was non-binary while my hair was drying and she still flirted with me. I could have blushed to death in that chair while she was coloring my hair. But the roots of my hair are still a dark brown color; I liked how that looked though. Thanks to that same girl my eyelashes had gotten nicely done too, before then they were just all crumpled and awful looking. I was tempted to put something on my lips or face for Irish, but I had no makeup since I never wore any. Instead I put on my nice leather jacket, a fancy black shirt, my nice jeans, leather boots, and I took off my omni-watch and left it at the hotel, trading it for an old fashioned wallet containing ID chips and Currency Chips.

Never liked wearing that bulking omni-watch anyway, sure I could get a Cell instead or a sleek new omni-watch, but my brother bought me that one as a present and it still worked fine. So I never saw any real reason to replace it.

The Uber ends up waiting ten minutes for me, but the driver doesn’t say anything. He drives me to a parking place in Eyesteinsdalur, which is the closest parking place to Snæfellsjökull the stratovolcano there is. I end up having to hike at least half way to the dig site, then luckily some of the other archeologists working with Irish come by and offer me a lift the rest of the way there on their small transport crafts. The dig site isn’t on the side of Snæfellsjökull like I thought it might be, but at the base of it, near it but at the bottom. Jules Verne would be so proud, they may not have found a way to the center of the Earth but they found some of _THE_ **oldest** ruins in history there.

When we start getting close I can make out some of the ruins. It almost looks like a temple, tall and amazing and gorgeous. The building almost glitters, but years of decay keep it from glowing as much as it once did I imagine.

The dig site is one of the biggest I’ve ever seen, and even at almost two in the morning people are still working, I imagine most are asleep in the camping places set aside for the team though. Tented areas are all over the place, and people seem to be keeping on their toes. It’s a good thing I decided against taking snap shots today, I’d most likely get at least one sleep deprived person in each shot at this rate.

Walking up I’m just taking in the grandness of the temple ahead of me. I can see now the large and opulent stair case that leads up to the huge open doors. It seems as if each brick is made from painted glass or gold. No wonder the Smithsonian and National Geographic were losing their shit over this find, not only was it one of the oldest ruins ever found but it looked like a temple built by the rich made for Gods.

“Max! Max is that you?!”

A sugar sweet voice that sounded like a melody to my ears rung across the dig site, turning my head I see Irish. She looks tired, no makeup on, wearing worn and dirty clothes, obviously having been elbow deep in dirt. But to me she was as beautiful as ever.

With her long elegant legs she strides up to me and sweeps me into a bear hug, picking me up off the ground, reminding me how much taller she was then me. I didn’t care though; it was so nice to see her again. Just as quick as she picked me up she put me down, smiling a big smile that was just for me. 

“You’re three days early Max! Why didn’t you call? I look a mess!” She frets, now trying to wipe herself down.

I laugh, the smile on my face so big it almost hurt, but in the best way. “Got done early with a project in Brazil, Ninyo says ‘hi’ by the way. I wanted to surprise you, and there’s no reason to get all in a huff, you could be covered in mud and you’d still be beautiful to me.” I say honestly, watching as her eyes light up.

She shakes her head. “You are just too sweet sometimes.”

“Says the walking jar of sugar.” I reply.

“Ah, gente guapa, are you two done flirting?” A Spanish accented voice with a deep and soothing baritone interrupts mine and Irish’s reunion, turning in surprise I see the last person I was expecting.

“Ninyo?! The hell, how’d you beat me here you crafty son of bitch!” I reply to the shorter and skinner man who walks up to us. He smiles with his nice white teeth, his long dark hair in a ponytail, rubbing lotion into his overly taxed skin as he speaks. I can’t help but be happy to see him too, although not as much as Irish.

“Idioma, Max! Someone so handsome should speak more delicately, no?” He says, making the three of us go silent, then we crack out into laughter three seconds later. “I kid, I kid!” Ninyo adds, and then used his hand to wipe away tears of laughter. Inside joke, sorry you don’t get it. “Sorry Maxy, when you are the head of a relatively important company you can take jet-copters to where ever you need to go, much faster than turbo-planes.”

Ninyo Acosta, a man who grew up in Brazil but founded his company in London. Acosta Historical Community Inc. is the tie that binds all sources of information about archeological finds and artifacts, by that I mean he brought together a bunch of famous archeologists, gave them jobs, and lends them and their finds to museums. Then had museums all over the world agree to share their exhibits and any information about historical finds with him and each other. Irish worked for him long before she worked for anyone else, because he saw her potential and skill. He’s a good man, with a bit of an ego, but he’s a softy deep down. When I mentioned I wanted to see Brazil to Irish she told Ninyo and he not only got me to Brazil and showed me around, but shared his old family home with me while we were there.

“And you didn’t tell me why?” I eye the older man, crossing my arms in a pretend pout.

“Cachorro de puchero, you didn’t tell me you were coming here!” He argues, throwing his nicely manicured hands into the air.

“I’m not a _‘pouty puppy’_!” After I say that I hear Irish giggle. “Besides, I wanted to surprise Irish! And you can’t keep a secret to save your life.”

He shrugs in reply. “True.”

“Anyway!” Irish nearly shouts, bringing the attention back to her. “I imagine, as tempted as I am to think so, you didn’t come here just to see little ‘ol me!” She says, batting her eyelashes. “I have to say, I’m not even jealous. This find is spectacular!” Irish turns around and motions extravagantly towards the ruins. “You should see what it looks like when the sun hits it!” 

“Yes, I agree. This find has been amazing so far. I’m excited for you to see it Maxy.” Ninyo adds, clapping his hand on my shoulder. I smile at him and nod. He’s giving me that look again, and it makes me feel warm inside, that look of _‘I see you as family and I’m proud of you’_. He’s afraid to say it out loud, but he’s said that to me in other ways. That’s what’s nicest about working for Ninyo, sure he jokes around too much, but he sees all of his employees as family and takes care of them. And he treats me like a little sister because he knows about what happened between me and my family.

Suddenly Ninyo yawns and takes back his hand. “Well gente guapa, that’s it for me. I’m turning in!” He shouts, and pats me on the back as he leaves. I pout at him behind his back, sad to see him go.

“You two really bonded in Brazil didn’t you? Now that I’m jealous of!” When I turn back to Irish she’s looking at me intently, with a warm and kind hearted smile on her face. Not as big and bright as the one she greeted me with, but still just as honest. She has her arms crossed and also looks just as tired if not more so than Ninyo did.

I shake my hands and head. “Nothing to be jealous of, we didn’t even spend a bunch of time together. At first, sure. He just had to show me ALL his favorite spots in Brazil, and then sign autographs. Did you know he did a catalogue shoot in Paris last year? I had no idea. EVERYONE was fawning over him, it was ridiculous! I couldn’t stand the crowds, so after a week we split up. Not a big deal.” I explain, hand on my hips; I keep looking between Irish and the temple. It looks so interesting, it mesmerizes me.

Irish notices this; she tries to sigh but yawns instead. “Well I won’t keep you from exploring, although there’s not much to explore yet. A little past the entrance is as far as we got today and you know the rules; no going past the roped off areas!” She says that last sentence very seriously and warningly, almost like a mother to a child. I roll my eyes.

“Yes mother.” I reply, arms crossed, not looking her in the eyes.

“I’m serious, I know you have this….uncontrollable urge to explore and learn everything, but any farther than we got could be dangerous Max!” She warns me again, with a much harsher tone. I nod, signaling I understood. “Alright, now you better not be a shish kabob by the time I wake up tomorrow!” With that she yawns again.

I roll my eyes again. “I’ll be alright Irish, you go grab some winks, I’m sure you won’t get many with the schedule they have you on.” I say to her, this time looking back at her, smiling.

She smirks lightly and nods, heading off towards her RV. “If anyone wakes me before noon they’re getting that mean right hook my daddy taught me!” She yells over her shoulder, at that I laugh. As if she would punch anyone, she kills with kindness and she knows it.

As soon as she’s out of eye sight I turn back to the temple ahead, only a few feet away. It towered above, still tiny compared to a volcano though. Before I head towards the steps I take the visor I have out of my jacket pocket. I put it on and connect it to my translator, an explorer’s best friend this visor computer is. It’s one of the only things I try to keep up-to-date with. When it attaches it connects to the WWI (World Wide Internet) and I give it the voice command to turn on the flash light attachment. It’s bright but not too bright, I also take my gloves out and put them on as I walk up to the temple, and then I zip up my jacket so the collar completely covers my mouth.

Very cautiously I walk up the many steps of the temple; with each one step I take I get more and more excited. Irish was right; ever since I was born I was full to the brim of curiosity and an overwhelming desire to learn. Had it not been the day and age it is now, I would not have been able to travel like I do, and explore as I have, no, had I been born in any other era I’d probably be dead, never having been able to leave that hospital. But dwelling on that only gave me conflicting emotions.

I once went to a fortune teller in Greece, said she was a decedent of the original Romani people, she also said a spirit told her that I had an old soul, and that I only sought to regain the knowledge my soul once held. That was an interesting thing to think about, that maybe I was a reincarnated scholar whose soul had lived through all ages of history. If that was true, I yearned for the day memories of other times might flood back to me.

Finally I reach the top step, overwhelmed I look up at the doors. They practically shimmer with a golden glow, I can’t help but feel pulled in. I yearn to touch the walls, the doors, everything. But even with gloves I know I shouldn’t, so I carefully maneuver past the doors and into the temple. On the inside there are statues of creatures that look like deer and elk put together, they also shimmer in the light.

I watch where I step and find myself at the roped off area quickly. She wasn’t kidding, they hadn’t gotten far. They must have been so careful they were moving at a snail’s pace. When I look up something reflects the light from my flash light, I want to know what it was so badly it hurts.

“Well,” I say to myself with a deep breath. “I never promised her I wouldn’t go past, and I’m not going to touch anything.” It wasn’t hard to talk myself into going past the rope, really it was too easy. Sometimes even I could be a jackass. No big surprise there though, I was only human after all.

Carefully slipping past the rope, I find myself heading towards the center of the temple. The room is wide, and there seem to be seats on each side of the wall. Was this once a place to worship maybe? When I reach the absolute center of the room there seems to be an altar there, an altar that….had a mummified corpse on it. _Welp._

“I _would_ be grossed out….if I hadn’t seen much worse corpses than that before.” I say darkly, not grossed out but now becoming a bit worried. “I guess this was a sacrificial altar. Lovely.” I feel cynicism grip me along with my instincts creating a knot in my stomach. I avoid the altar completely and head farther towards the back.

There I find a large mosaic piece along the back wall with three thrones in front of it. The thrones are made of stone but the mosaic art on the wall looks like it was made from several hundred pieces of colored glass. If I squinted it looked like the yellow pieces of the glass were in the shape of people? Maybe not people but something like that, and those yellow pieces were perfectly aligned with the thrones.

“So…” I think for a moment. “This was a room where people sacrificed things ….or other _people_ to… people of royalty? Maybe?” I ask myself out loud and then shake my head. “Best leave the investigating to the professionals I guess.”

When I look back up to the mosaic piece, I noticed there was writing above it. Even after studying so much I’m not sure what language it is, luckily whatever was used to write it stayed perfectly clear and unblemished.

“Alright translator, do your stuff!” I say excitedly, turning on the translation program then getting the visor to scan the words. I’d done this in some Aztec ruins before, since the translation program takes all the info in the WWI it’s always been able to translate anything I can throw at it, funny that this time it can’t. I hear an error noise, and am very surprised by the message that appears on my visor. “No translation available! But that’s crazy!” I shout, tempted to take the visor off and throw it on the ground, instead I just turn it off and fume, wrenching my hands together. “Okay, calm down, its letters you know, oddly enough, which makes it even stranger that _stupid_ thing can’t translate it, just breath and sound it out yourself!” I take several deep breaths trying to calm my frustration, when I feel more level headed I look back up at the writing.

There in this deep red scrawl it says: **Evanuris sulevin ghilana hanin.**

I look at it for a while, going over the possible pronunciation in my head. There was no possible way I could gather what it meant just from these words alone. But still, I was eager to try the language on my lips. I could be the first person to say this phrase in centuries, which was a very awesome thing to think about.

“Ev-an-ur-is.” I say slowly first. “Sul-ee-vin.” The language feels rocky on my tongue, but something in me pulls at the sound of it. “G-ha-il-an-a.” It feels like forever when I finally get to the last word, thinking the pronunciation over in my head for minutes before saying each word carefully. “Han-in.” It takes only a second after I say the last word for something to happen, which I honestly wasn’t expecting.

Something flashes to my left, it makes me nearly jump out of my skin, I hear the sound of something like white noise and a water fall put together. It scares me but also interests me. I look over to where it came from and see something. Warily, I walk over to it. It’s in the shape of a tall mirror and it _is_ …a mirror?

“Great, a mirror, like there’s not enough of those in the world!” I shout, feeling the irony of the situation. But before I can roll my eyes and walk away, I see something like a wave inside the mirror. Instead of it reflecting it was almost as if the glass was made of rolling waves of erratic water. “Uh?” It calls back to me, and hypnotized by the waves I stretch my hand thoughtlessly towards the moving glass.

When my hand touches it and doesn’t stop, goes into the glass, I feel my heart begin to race. But instead of scared I feel awe struck and far too enthralled to think soundly. A sane person would have pulled their hand out and ran screaming into the night. But not me, just call me an adrenaline junkie. I went further, and further still, until the waves of glowing glass itself pulled me in like a tidal wave.

And then I was gone.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so with the fact it being set in the future is that I like the idea that some how Thedas is Earth, and the events of Mass Effect and Dragon Age take place on the same planet but with centuries between them. I can't expound anymore on that with out possibly accidentally giving anything else away. Also I apologize, as usual I have to use Google Translate for the languages.


End file.
